Prior to the rapid onset of digital imaging, patient images were “printed” to film. The film was “hung” and viewed by radiologists, who would then dictate a report. Reports were transcribed by individuals ranging for administrative staff to medical transcriptionists and sent to ordering physicians via mail or fax. Critical results were delivered by phone or pager and business statistics were managed via paper reports and spreadsheets. Diagnostic collaboration was facilitated during face-to-face meetings or teleconferences.
As information systems for radiology came to market, the first commercially available solutions addressed the needs of the radiologist and the radiology department. These included Radiology Information Systems (RIS) and dictation transcription systems. RIS systems managed the ordering, scheduling, patient and management reporting processes while radiologists were still reading from film.
As modalities started to support the digital display of images on workstations connected to the acquisition device, Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) came to market. These centrally store images and provide radiologists with the tools to read studies on networked computer monitors, replacing both film and modality workstations.
Over time, the needs of the market have evolved from supporting specialized radiologist workflows to supporting the open and dynamic needs of the enterprise and the community. The vendor community has added systems to manage the need for advanced technologies for improving diagnosis; sharing images between providers and organizations; and supporting collaboration between radiologists, physicians and teams providing care for the patient. These systems ultimately improve care by closing the loop on the reporting of critical results while managing the growing storage requirements. Often these are disparate, best-of breed systems that may or may not interoperate, increasing cost and decreasing productivity.
In a healthcare workflow, healthcare providers often consult or otherwise interact with each other. Such interaction typically involves paging or telephoning another practitioner. Thus, interaction between healthcare practitioners may be time- and energy-consuming. Therefore, there is a need for a system and method to simplify and improve communication and interaction between healthcare practitioners.
Furthermore, healthcare practitioners may want or need to review diagnoses and/or reports from another healthcare practitioner. For example, a referring physician may want to review a radiologist's diagnosis and report with the radiologist and/or a technician. As another example, an emergency room physician may need to review results of an emergency room study with the radiologist and/or a family physician. Thus, there is a need for a system and method to facilitate medical diagnostic collaboration to provide safe and effective treatment.